8.  The applicant was born in 1974 and lives in the city of Simferopol, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (Ukraine).
9.  The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.
10.  The full name of the applicant, a Ukrainian citizen of Russian origin, is, in Cyrillic, “Дмитрий Владимирович Булгаков” (Dmitriy Vladimirovich Bulgakov). Dmitriy is the first, or given, name; Bulgakov is the surname, while Vladimirovich is the “patronymic” (otchestvo in Russian, po-bat'kovi in Ukrainian) - in other words, a second given name, derived from the father's given name and the appropriate gender suffix.
11.  The applicant was born on the territory of former Soviet Belorussia. His birth certificate was issued in the Russian language. On 21 September 1990, by then living on the territory of former Soviet Ukraine, the applicant received his first Soviet passport (паспорт гражданина СССР), issued in Russian and Ukrainian. According to the applicant, in the Ukrainian version, his name and patronymic were transliterated from Russian as “Дмітрій Владіміровіч” (Dmitriy Vladimirovich). According to the Government, the applicant's name and patronymic could not appear in the Ukrainian version other than in its Ukrainian form – “Дмитро Володимирович” (Dmytro Volodymyrovych), since the rules at that time knew no exceptions. (However, neither party could submit any document to prove their assertions, because no archives or copies of that passport exist any longer).
12.  In 1993 the applicant lost his passport and, given a lack of new Ukrainian passport forms, he was issued with a special temporary identity certificate drafted in Russian.
13.  In December 1997 the applicant applied for and received a Ukrainian citizen's internal passport (паспорт громадянина України) from the Directorate General of the Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior in the Crimea (Головне управлiння Мiнiстерства внутрiшнiх справ в АР Крим, “the Directorate”). Page 2 of this document is drawn up in Ukrainian, and the applicant's given name and patronymic appear in their Ukrainian form “Дмитро Володимирович” (Dmytro Volodymyrovych). However, on page 3 of the passport, which is in Russian, his whole name is written in its original Russian form.
14.  In June 1998 the applicant applied to the Directorate for a Ukrainian citizen's passport for travel abroad (паспорт громадянина України для виїзду за кордон; an “external passport”). It appears from the case file that, when submitting his application, the applicant was obliged to complete and sign a form on which he gave his given name as Dmytro. This “Ukrainianised” form of his given name (“ДМИТРО / DMYTRO”) appears on the first page of the passport, which is in Ukrainian and English; there is no mention of the patronymic. The applicant challenged this “Ukrainianisation” by means of an internal appeal, submitted to the management of the Directorate's local branch, which dismissed it.
15.  In July 1998 the applicant appealed to the Kievskiy District Court, Simferopol. He submitted that there had been a violation of his right to the integrity of his given name, and asked the court to order the authorities to issue him with a new passport and to pay him 1,700 hryvnas for non-pecuniary damage.
16.  After adversarial proceedings, the court dismissed the appeal in a judgment of 16 August 1999. The judgment noted that the disputed spelling complied with the relevant regulations, which stated that all entries on the first page of an external passport were to be in Ukrainian and English. The court also noted that all of the principal entries in such a passport were to follow the model of the corresponding entries in the internal passport issued to the same person. On the first page of his internal passport, the applicant's given name had been entered as Dmytro; accordingly, this spelling was also to be used in the external passport. In addition, the court pointed out that the applicant himself had written his given name as Dmytro on the passport application form; consequently, his objections were unfounded.
17.  The applicant appealed to the Crimea Supreme Court. He vehemently denied that he had used the form Dmytro on the application form. In his opinion, this was a manifestly erroneous finding by the court of first instance, since he had, without question, indicated that his given name was Dmitriy and not Dmytro.
18.  In a judgment of 2 February 2000, the Crimea Supreme Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the findings of the court of first instance.
19.  The applicant subsequently made several applications to the prosecution service and the President of the Crimea Supreme Court for supervisory review of the final decision, all of which were dismissed.
20.  In April 2000 the applicant submitted an internal appeal to the head of the Directorate's local branch. He challenged the fact that his given name and patronymic had been translated into Ukrainian; in particular, he alleged that, even on the Ukrainian page of the passport, these ought to have appeared in their original form merely transliterated into the Ukrainian alphabet, not replaced by their Ukrainian equivalents. Consequently, according to the applicant, his name ought to have been written on page 2 of the passport as “Дмiтрiй Владiмiровiч” (Dmitriy Vladimirovich), since the Cyrillic grapheme 'И' reads as [i] in Russian but as [y][1] in Ukrainian. The appeal was dismissed.
21.  In June 2000 the applicant lodged an application with the Kievskiy District Court of First Instance, Simferopol, for an order requiring the authorities to issue him with a new passport in which his given name and patronymic would be written in their original form on both the Russian and Ukrainian pages. In his submissions he emphasised, inter alia, that he belonged to the Russian minority and that consequently, under section 12 of the National Minorities Act, he was entitled to use the original, Russian form of his name. According to the applicant, when entering his given name and patronymic on page 2 of the passport, the authorities would have been entitled to transliterate them into the Ukrainian alphabet, but they had not been entitled to replace them with Ukrainian equivalents.
22.  After adversarial proceedings, the Court of First Instance dismissed the appeal as unfounded. The judgment noted that the disputed passport had been drawn up in compliance with the Passports of Ukrainian Citizens Order, which stated that the holder's personal data were to appear “in Ukrainian and in Russian”. Finally, the court pointed out that page 3 of the passport had been drawn up in Russian, and that all the elements of the applicant's name appeared on it in their original form; accordingly, there had been no violation of the applicant's fundamental rights.
23.  The applicant appealed against this judgment to the Crimea Supreme Court which, in a judgment of 30 August 2000, also dismissed his appeal. In the Supreme Court's opinion, the provision by which the holder's personal data were to appear “in Ukrainian and in Russian” indeed meant that the given name, patronymic and surname were “to comply with the requirements of the Ukrainian language, in application of the rules governing literary translation”. Like the Court of First Instance, the Supreme Court added that there had been no violation of the right to the integrity of one's name in the present case, since all the entries on page 3 of the passport had been in Russian.
24.  As with his external passport, the applicant made several applications to the prosecution service and the President of the Crimea Supreme Court for a supervisory review of the final decision. These appeals were all dismissed.